When Evil Lived in Laurel
The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer
by Curtis Wilkie
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Pub Date Jun 15 2021 | Archive Date May 31 2021
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Description
The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing.
By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black man, he was a farmer, grocery store owner, and two-time president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP. He and Medgar Evers founded a youth NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg, and for years after Evers’s assassination Dahmer was the chief advocate for voting rights in a county where Black registration was shamelessly suppressed. This put Dahmer in the crosshairs of the White Knights, with headquarters in nearby Laurel. Already known as one of the most violent sects of the KKK in the South, the group carried out his murder in a raid that burned down his home and store.
A year before, Tom Landrum, a young, unassuming member of a family with deep Mississippi roots, joined the Klan to become an FBI informant. He penetrated the White Knights’ secret circles, recording almost daily journal entries. He risked his life, and the safety of his young family, to chronicle extensively the clandestine activities of the Klan. Veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie draws on his exclusive access to Landrum’s journals to re-create these events—the conversations, the incendiary nighttime meetings, the plans leading up to Dahmer’s murder and its erratic execution—culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of many of those responsible for Dahmer’s death.
In riveting detail, When Evil Lived in Laurel plumbs the nature and harrowing consequences of institutional racism, and brings fresh light to this chapter in the history of civil rights in the South—one with urgent implications for today.
About the Author: Curtis Wilkie covered civil rights activity in Mississippi in the 1960s and afterward served as a national and international correspondent for a quarter century at the Boston Globe. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Advance Praise
"When Evil Lived in Laurel is set during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but its concerns could not be more central to our current moment: voting rights, white supremacist terror, and the ground-level mechanisms of white radicalization. With meticulous research and all the tools of a novelist, Curtis Wilkie chronicles the Klan-ordered murder of activist Vernon Dahmer, and Tom Landrum’s infiltration of the White Knights. Read this book if you want to understand how racist words and ideas turn into violent, murderous action." - Patrick Phillips, author of Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
"I’m a longtime admirer of Curtis Wilkie’s deep and insightful work, and his chilling journey through the KKK’s murder of Vernon Dahmer will stay with you long after you close this book. This kind of violence is where tacit encouragement of extremists leads, and Wilkie shows you how." - Greg Iles, New York Times bestselling author of Natchez Burning
"Curtis Wilkie’s riveting account of the murder of Vernon Dahmer by the KKK is a window into the depths of racism and white supremacy. But it is also a beautifully written tale of courage and morality featuring a man with deep local roots that knew right from wrong. When Evil Lived in Laurel can help us understand the Civil Rights era in the South and also our country today." - Walter Isaacson, Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values, Tulane University
"When Evil Lived in Laurel is an extremely useful book, in addition to being impossible to put down. It’s about evil; terrible men doing terrible things to their fellow humans. But it’s also about convention and cowardice and hypocrisy and ignorance and public lies—and also about quiet heroism—all matters of vital concern to us in America at this very moment." - Richard Ford
"Though the frightful history of the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi is a familiar one, Curtis Wilkie’s account of the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer is astonishing. Drawing on voluminous, remarkable FBI documents, court records, congressional hearings, and interviews, Wilkie paints a compelling picture of the dogged pursuit of justice by law enforcement officials, heretofore untold acts of courage by ordinary citizens, and the involvement of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—alternately pernicious and inept. When Evil Lived in Laurel may well be the finest book on the Civil Rights era." - Richard Howorth, Square Books
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781324005759 |
| PRICE | $28.95 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Alayna R, Reviewer
This book paints an accurate and haunting picture of Mississippi during the civil rights era, when the KKK was at its most powerful, and evil. I was aghast at the actions the KKK took, and how involved/encouraging the police and governments both local and not were. I was surprised by how informative this book was, and how much I had missed about the movement.
The author has created a great nonfictional book that handles the subject matter with grace - but it does not sugarcoat it. Overall I highly recommend this book. I will be buying it.
I want to sincerely thank netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to the ARC!
Lesley D, Reviewer
This book is especially timely despite being set in the late 1960's. Anyone who has had an interest in the Mississippi Burning case will be very interested to read FBI agent Tom Landrum's firsthand reports of his infiltration of the KKK. He was assigned the murder case of Vernon Dahmer, a prominent civil rights advocate who founded a youth chapter of the NAACP with Medgar Evers. This is as gripping as any murder mystery, and as fact-based as any reputable history book. I was surprised to realize that the KKK was not a monolithic organization but one that varied greatly in goals and methods from state to state and community to community. It was this rivalry and disunity that eroded the prominence of the KKK.
An excellent book and highly readable!
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